Mills Faces IMF Heat

President John Atta Mills

THE FORMER Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, has stated that the Mills administration has started feeling the heat of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities regarding the $300million loan facility the government secured from the fund.

He said the government's failure to guarantee the $80 million letters of credit (LC) to the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) for the lifting of the 999,000 barrels of crude oil from Sahara Oil, a Nigerian oil dealer, was one of the dictates of the IMF conditionalities regarding the loan.

According to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Tafo in Kumasi, as per the IMF conditionalities, the government is debarred from securing or guaranteeing commercial loans, notwithstanding its purpose.

Again, the high ranking member of the Parliamentary select committee on finance said last Friday's 5 per cent increment in fuel prices was in line with the IMF conditionality which demands that the government operates the deregulation system to the fullest to ensure that the citizenry pays full cost for fuel consumption.

The economic wizard indicated that had it not been the IMF conditionality, the government would have chosen the option of fully subsidizing the cost of fuel with the view of deceiving the populace that they care about their welfare.

The former Minister of State at the finance ministry made these striking observations on Monday afternoon during the swearing-in ceremony of 225 NPP polling station executives and ward coordinators for the Tafo constituency.

Dr. Akoto noted that sooner than later, the other striking aspects of the IMF conditionalities regarding the loan would become so much prevalent that the NPP would be vindicated.

It would be recalled that the minority in Parliament held a series of press conferences and fora to draw attention to the fact that the government's decision to contract 300 million dollars loan from the IMF was not a good deal because of the harsh conditionalities attached.

But determined to secure the loan which would be released in two tranches of 150 million dollars each, President Mills' government ignored the caution of the minority in Parliament and went ahead and signed the deal with the IMF.

The Tafo Legislator took a swipe at the committee set up by the government to probe the 70 per cent purchase agreement between the previous government and Vodafone, a British Telephony Company.

He said the work of the committee was a waste of the tax payer's money and that nothing good would come of it because the purchase agreement was genuinely done.

Dr. Akoto noted that the swearing-in ceremony marks a beginning of an aggressive campaigning towards recapturing power from the NDC in the 2012 elections.

He asserted that the executives have the responsibility of working assiduously from now onwards to ensure that the electorates in the constituency appreciate the difference between the NPP government under ex-President Kufuor and the NDC under President Mills.

Dr. Akoto charged the executives to become ambassadors of peace, not only in the constituency but wherever they may find themselves, stressing that unity was a prerequisite for the party's electoral victory in 2012.

Swearing-in the executives, the Ashanti Regional Secretary of the party, Mr. Samuel Cudjoe admonished the executives to rally behind the constituency executives and the MP to fashion out formidable strategies towards consolidating the party's support base.

From Morgan Owusu, Kumasi